“1 play in the 1st Half, 4 plays in the 2nd half,…. A bit disappointed about my playing time but very happy and satisfied about the win…Just time to work harder for next week … My team always comes first so I’ma just keep grinding,.. And we gonna keep winning”

This is a Tweet from former Virginia Tech Hokie, and current New York Jets wide receiver David Clowney.

At first glance, one would be inclinced to think that this is just another athlete tyring to make headlines by going public with his lack of playing time.

But without knowing the full context of his remarks, they look like he is responding to a question that somebody asked him.  And, of course, leave it to those people who surf the ‘Net looking for Tweets from 3rd string wide receivers to find this comment from Clowney.

Now, Clowney was benched for Week 3′s game by Jets coach Rex Ryan.  Here’s Ryan’s take on the incident:

“I’m not a big Twitter guy, but you hear different things. To me, it’s about your team. No individual is bigger than the team. So if I feel a guy is not putting the team first, then I’ll make the decision to put the guy down.

“I put David down. That was my decision. I wanted to see how David would respond. David had two options: He could have come out and been upset and pouted or he could come out and been a Jet, worked his tail off and showed me that he wants to do it our way.

“He did exactly that. He was phenomenal in preparation. I’ll probably give him scout team player of the week.”

Now, first of all, Twitter is obviously a public conversation tool.  Everyone can see your comments – so if you don’t want someone to see your reactions, don’t put them on Twitter.  If I was Clowney, I probably would have held back on that one.  If someone Tweeted me with a sensitive question, I probably wouldn’t give a sensitive answer over Twitter.

That being said, Ryan’s comment was a bunch of hogwash.  He simply wanted to make a statement out of this guy…and he did.  So, now the Jets players know what not to do.

Clowney’s comments were so mild-mannered that I couldn’t even think of a reason to be displeased about them.  And for Ryan to say that he was putting himself before the team was just plain crazy.  He couldn’t have extracted that from Clowney’s comments.

And who “puts somebody down to see how they would respond?”  I thought you put somebody down because they did something wrong.

I think Ryan is riding the wave of a 3-0 start.  Let’s see how he responds when the Jets “get put down.”

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